Doing a Musk, Part Two: Integrating X with xAI and the plan to make a new global, social payments system

I got hauled up for being a Musk hater the other day which, to be clear, I am not. It’s purely that he is the richest man in the world and the most powerful, even more powerful than Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, so the media hate him. As we are fed daily media updates criticising the man, you end up disliking him too but, tbh, he is a brilliant strategist. After all, if you look at Tesla, SpaceX, the Boring Company, X and his empire, he’s not doing badly … although I did question his actions on Tesla and general behaviours the other day.

But the latest bold move is to merge two of his companies – X and xAI – into one. Announcing this on X, Musk states:

@xAI has acquired @X in an all-stock transaction. The combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45B less $12B debt). Since its founding two years ago, xAI has rapidly become one of the leading AI labs in the world, building models and data centers at unprecedented speed and scale. X is the digital town square where more than 600M active users go to find the real-time source of ground truth and, in the last two years, has been transformed into one of the most efficient companies in the world, positioning it to deliver scalable future growth. xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent. This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach. The combined company will deliver smarter, more meaningful experiences to billions of people while staying true to our core mission of seeking truth and advancing knowledge. This will allow us to build a platform that doesn’t just reflect the world but actively accelerates human progress.

Source: Elon Musk

Fascinating move, but some people aren’t buying it.

Let’s cut the bullshit and talk about what this really means for the 600 million users you’re crowing about. You’re painting this as some noble quest for “truth and human progress,” but the cracks in your story are big enough to drive a Tesla truck through. Here are some questions that need answering—because Americans aren’t here to be your lab rats or data piñatas.

Source: Skyline Report

In fact, what many are talking about is that the user data and behaviours in X will now feed the analytics of his AI machine. Most people are concerned about what this means to privacy and data usage, with the most likely response coming from the European Commission over infringements of GDPR (the General Data Protection Regulation). Bear in mind that the Commission was worrying about data before this announcement. Regardless, there is a really interesting move here.

The merger of X and xAI – and the stated intent to bring in a cryptocoin to that ecosystem. Musk has made it clear for some time that his intent is to bring payments into the X ecosystem as they push to make it the superapp for the world. In January 2024, X blogged about it:

We will launch peer-to-peer payments, unlocking more user utility and new opportunities for commerce, and showcasing the power of living more of your life in one place.

So, imagine this as Elon does, bearing in mind that his start point was a company called X back in the 1990s which then became PayPal. You have a massively intelligent system leveraging 600 million users data to engage direct global payments on a peer-to-peer basis using a cryptocurrency like Dogecoin (Musk's preferred crypto). The one thing about Elon Musk is that he may appear crass or autistic on occasion, but he is brilliant at joining the dots and this move might be the killer move to integrate AI, payments and social networking. Watch this space.